Whenever it seems that painting has run its course, an exhibition like Various Peep Shows comes along to restore our faith in the medium. For her third solo show at Honor Fraser Gallery, Annie Lapin presents a series that contains within each work the broad spectrum of paint’s physical and representational possibilities. These are much more than postmodern pastiches, however, as they show a sincere[…..]
Love is a kind of obsession, and obsession is a kind of love. It is this sentiment, not one of sensationalism or romanticism, that permeates the works in the two-gallery group exhibition, Stay in Love, curated by Chris Sharp at Lisa Cooley and Laurel Gitlen. Alternating between meditative, neurotic, and celebratory, the featured artists investigate the subjects of their fascination with the thoroughness that exists[…..]
Sofia Leiby‘s first solo exhibition in Chicago, titled The Drama of Leisure, consists of fourteen paintings and three runs of screen prints. Now on view at Devening Projects + Editions, Leiby’s paintings and drawings are clearly influenced by her experience as a printmaker. In most works, the artist paints as if the brush were a thick, wet crayon, and she sketches and fills with rapid[…..]
Mao Zedong once said that revolution is not a dinner party. Less famously, he said it is not embroidery, either. Interestingly, however, some female contemporary Chinese artists have chosen to work with thread and textiles—and embroidery—in experimental, maybe even revolutionary ways. From Lin Tianmiao’s overt exploration of sexuality, fecundity, and the aging and decay of the body, to Yin Xiuzhen’s use of the embodied memories[…..]
Amy Sillman? All I can say is pentimenti. The artist’s working process provides so many transitory parts that the brain has to protect itself by combining them into a whole. The work comes to a rest, but hiding under the surface are two interpretive horizons: The complete painting and the individual paint strokes. The whole work is inseparable from each stroke, and yet the individual[…..]
Happy New Year! For the last day of our Best of 2013 series, we bring you Randall Miller‘s review of AFRICOBRA at the Logan Center for the Arts in Chicago. This review was originally published on July 23, 2013, and as a consideration of art, activism, race, class, and collectivism, it bears a second look as we move forward into the new year. What changes—in[…..]
Today’s article comes from Slovakian curator and art critic Richard Gregor, who takes us through a recent work by Veronika Rónaiová/Julián Filo that features the members of the band Pussy Riot. Two days ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he will free Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 24, and Maria Alyokhina, 25, who were jailed after performing an anti-Putin “punk prayer,” at Moscow’s Christ the Savior cathedral in February last[…..]
